Well, the Summer Vacation is officially over and it’s the first day of THIRD GRADE! The boys must be getting more mature because neither one of them gave Mom a hard time about taking any pictures this morning. Very proud of them. 😉

I’ve been shopping for a new car for the past couple of months. My pickup has about 250,000 miles in it now and I was looking to give it a rest. However, I’m always on the lookout for a new new project car and I found just that in a little British sports car.

This 1973 MGB was delivered today from North Carolina. This was the last year of chrome bumpers for this car because in 1974, British Leyland’s U.S. exports had to meet new crash standards, which resulted in plastic bumpers and a couple more inches of clearance. That same year, they also had to meet new emissions standards, so this was also the last year the U.S. MGs arrived without catalytic converters. And it’s so pretty.

So, what about the new car? Well, this is a new car…for me, anyway. Seriously though, it’ll allow me to give the truck a break and I get to teach Adam and Alex about vehicle mechanics. And with the money we saved, Cindy will get to buy a new car next year! Everybody wins!

This isn’t the boys’ first experience with the death of a loved one. They lost their Nanny Vera (Cindy’s mom) a few years ago, but they were only 3-years-old and really too young to comprehend what was happening. This time around, they saw and spoke to Pa while he lay sick in his bed. Now they’ve seen him lying in his casket, and although they seem to sense the weightiness of the situation, they’re still protected by a childhood innocence. The most interesting thing was their compulsion to touch Pa…they laid their hands on his forehead. During our drive to Virginia, we talked about Pa and I explained that he was dying. Alex asked if he was going to Heaven to be with God. I said, “Yes he is.”

My cousin Mark, who is a Methodist pastor, performed the funeral. I was touched by his words. The sky had opened up about an hour before and the rain was pouring down. Mark reminded everyone that Pa was a farmer and would’ve appreciated the rain. This made me smile. After the ceremony, we moved to the gravesite. I was one of the pall-bearers and helped lift Pa’s casket into the Hearse and from the Hearse to the grave stand.

Mark said a prayer at the gravesite and we left Pa to the funeral workers to lay him next to Granny to whom he has now been reunited…